As ridiculous as it may seem, with Ryan Howard and Chase Utley out with leg
issues, and with $21 million pitcher Cliff Lee winless, the Phillies finished
the first two months of the season at 28-25, fifth in a tight NL East pennant
chase, 2 ½ games behind the Washington Nationals.

And along came June. Early warning came on May 2 in Atlanta when Roy Halladay,
still considered at or near the top of the list of the best pitchers in baseball,
blew a 6-0 lead in Atlanta. What was that all about? It was about a sore
muscle in his shoulder. On May 29 in St. Louis Halladay removed himself in
the second inning when the pain became too much. Yikes!

Five days later, rookie infielder Freddy Galvis went down with a fractured
lumbar vertebrae. Switch-hitting Galvis had been a revelation with sometimes
astonishing, back-twisting, it turned out, back-breaking, infield play, and
surprising clutch hitting (3 HR, 24 RBI). Without Galvis the Phillies played
28 games prior to the July 10 All-Star game break, losing 19.

The truth that the 2012 Phillies will see their five-year reign as champions
of the NL East end became self evident when the team lost eight of nine following
the return of Chase Utley, and faced the second half of the season 16 games
in the loss column behind the high-flying Washington Nationals.

On the other hand, with 75 games remaining, if the Phillies go 65-10 . .
.

In 1969 the Phillies traded Dick Allen to the St. Louis Cardinals for Tim
McCarver and Curt Flood, a transaction that tolled the death knell for Baseball's
reserve clause and set the stage for avalanches of money to engulf, confuse,
and bemuse major league baseball players. That year Doctor Elizabeth
Kübler-Ross, taking note of the reaction of major league baseball club
owners to the demise of the reserve clause, published a book entitled On
Death and Dying. Doctor Kübler-Ross identified five stages of grief
related to such loss -